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Nelson Mandela in critical condition in South Africa hospital

The condition of Nelson Mandela’s health has become critical, South Africa’s president said.

Famed former president of South Africa, Nelson Mandela is described in a single word by South Africans. Video by Richard Lautens.

By Associated Press

Sun., June 23, 2013

JOHANNESBURG—The South African presidency says the health condition of Nelson Mandela has become critical.

The office of President Jacob Zuma said in a statement that he had visited the 94-year-old anti-apartheid leader at a hospital Sunday evening and was informed by the medical team that Mandela’s condition had become critical in the past 24 hours.

Former South African President Nelson Mandela is seen in this 2010 photo. (SIPHIWE SIBEKO / AFP/GETTY IMAGES)

Children pray during a Catholic mass at the Regina Mundi Catholic Church in Soweto Township on June 23 in Johannesburg, South Africa. The church played a central role in the anti-apartheid struggle, opening its doors to shelter to activists. (Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images)

Nelson Mandela in July 2012. (BARBARA KINNEY / AFP/GETTY IMAGES)

A man walks past a mural depicting different times in the life of former President Nelson Mandela in Soweto Township in Johannesburg, South Africa. (Chip Somodevilla / GETTY IMAGES)

“The doctors are doing everything possible to get his condition to improve and are ensuring that Madiba is well-looked after and is comfortable. He is in good hands,” Zuma said in the statement, using Mandela’s clan name.

Zuma also met Graca Machel, Mandela’s wife, at the hospital in Pretoria and discussed the former leader’s condition, according to the statement. Zuma was accompanied on the visit by Cyril Ramaphosa, the deputy president of the country’s ruling party, the African National Congress.

Mandela, who became South Africa’s first black president after the end of apartheid in 1994, was hospitalized on June 8 for what the government said was a recurring lung infection.

In the statement, Zuma also discussed the government’s acknowledgement a day earlier that an ambulance carrying Mandela to the hospital two weeks ago had engine trouble, requiring the former president to be transferred to another ambulance for his journey to the hospital.

“There were seven doctors in the convoy who were in full control of the situation throughout the period. He had expert medical care,” Zuma said. “The fully equipped military ICU ambulance had a full complement of specialist medical staff including intensive care specialists and ICU nurses. The doctors also dismissed the media reports that Madiba suffered cardiac arrest. There is no truth at all in that report.”

Zuma appealed to South Africans and the rest of the world to pray for Mandela, his family and the medical team that is attending to him.

Since stepping down after one term as president, Mandela has played little role in the public or political life of the continent’s biggest and most important economy.

His last public appearance was waving to fans from the back of a golf cart before the final of the soccer World Cup in Johannesburg’s Soccer City stadium in July 2010.

During his retirement, he has divided his time between his home in the wealthy Johannesburg suburb of Houghton, and Qunu, the village in the impoverished Eastern Cape province where he was born.

On April 29, state television broadcast footage of a visit by Zuma and other leaders of the African National Congress to Mandela’s home. Zuma said at the time that Mandela was in good shape, but the footage — the first public images of Mandela in nearly a year — showed him silent and unresponsive, even when Zuma tried to hold his hand.

At the time, the 101-year-old liberation movement, which led the fight against white-minority rule, assured the public Mandela was “in good shape” although the footage showed a thin and frail old man sitting expressionless in an armchair.

“Obviously we are very worried,” ANC spokesman Jackson Mthembu told Johannesburg station Talk Radio 702. “We are praying for him, his family and the doctors.”

Mandela was jailed for 27 years under white racist rule and was released in 1990. He then played a leading role in steering the divided country from the apartheid era to democracy, becoming South Africa’s first black president in all-race elections in 1994.

As a result of his sacrifice and peacemaking efforts, he is seen by many around the world as a symbol of reconciliation.

In Washington, U.S. President Barack Obama’s National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said the White House has seen the reports on Mandela’s health. “Our thoughts and prayers are with him, his family and the people of South Africa,” she said.

Obama is scheduled to visit South Africa with his family later this week. On Friday, a White House adviser said the president would defer to the Mandela family’s wishes on any contact with the former South African leader.

Despite the widespread adulation for Mandela, he is not without detractors at home and in the rest of Africa who feel that in the dying days of apartheid he made too many concessions to whites, who make up just 10 percent of the population.

After more than 10 years of affirmative action policies aimed at redressing the balance, South Africa remains one of the world’s most unequal societies, with whites still controlling much of the economy and the average white household earning six times more than a black one.

“Mandela has gone a bit too far in doing good to the non-black communities, really in some cases at the expense of (blacks),” Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, 89, said in a documentary aired on South African television this month.

“That’s being too saintly, too good, too much of a saint.”

With files from Reuters

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